The cell phone-clutching, under-30 Japanese crowd has a new "it" app. ImaHima
(which translates as "Are you free now?") lets Net-phone users send an
email - say, "Want to meet for a movie?" - to a group of people simultaneously.
The idea of making the newsgroup mobile came to Neeraj Jhanji
on a lonely Saturday in Tokyo two years ago, when he was an ecommerce
strategist for Andersen Consulting. Today Jhanji, 29, counts more than
200,000 registered subscribers, has closed his first round of financing,
and is among the elite ranks of official content providers for NTT DoCoMo's
wildly popular i-mode. (ImaHima also lists with NTT rival KDDI.) "I put
the first ImaHima together in just two intense weeks," laughs Jhanji. "In
April, we launch version 2." While ImaHima
(www.imahima.com)
is currently available only in Japan, copycat services are popping up in
the US - New York-based Upoc, for example - and Jhanji is actively looking
to expand.